A blog by Kate Culkin, the author of Harriet Hosmer: A Cultural Biography

Harriet Hosmer and the Prince of Wales

As all eyes turn to England and questions of who will design Kate Middleton’s wedding dress fill the airwaves, I am reminded of Harriet Hosmer’s encounters with a member of the English royalty. In 1859, the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) visited Hosmer’s studio and saw her at work on Zenobia, one of her most famous works. Harper’s Weekly published a cartoon of the encounter, depicting Hosmer’s mentor John Gibson discussing the work with the prince. Hosmer encountered the prince again at a ball in his honor in Boston in 1860, when he told the artist he kept his copy of her work Puck in his rooms at Oxford.